This subscription consists of quarterly reports focused on the market
activity of PC graphics controllers for mobile and desktop computing.
The report provides an in-depth look at the PC graphics market and
includes unit shipment and segment market share data, and trend analysis.

The graphics add-in board market has defied gravity for over a year now,
showing gains while the overall PC market slips. The silly notion of
integrated graphics catching up with discrete will hopefully be put to
rest now.

Market Share Shifts

The market shares for the desktop discrete GPU suppliers shifted in the
quarter too.

AIBs using discrete GPUs are found in desktop PCs, workstations,
servers, and other devices such as scientific instruments. They are sold
directly to customers as aftermarket products, or are factory installed
by OEMs. In all cases, AIBs represent the higher end of the graphics
industry with their discrete chips and private, often large, high-speed
memory, as compared to the integrated GPUs in CPUs that share slower
system memory.

The PC add-in board (AIB) market now has just three chip (GPU) suppliers
which also build and sell AIBs. The primary suppliers of GPUs are AMD
and Nvidia. There are 48 AIB suppliers, the AIB OEM customers of the GPU
suppliers, which they call partners.

Lots of AIB suppliers, smaller shipments. In addition to privately
branded AIBs offered worldwide, about a dozen PC suppliers offer AIBs as
part of a system, and/or as an option, and some that offer AIBs as
separate aftermarket products. We have been tracking AIB shipments
quarterly since 1987-the volume of those boards peaked in 1999, reaching
114 million units, in 2015, 44 million shipped.

The news for the quarter was encouraging and seasonally understandable,
quarter-to-quarter, the AIB market increased 5.6% (compared to the
desktop PC market, which increased 19.4%).

AIB shipments during the quarter increased from the last quarter 5.6%,
which is which is above the ten-year average of -4.7%. On a year-to-year
basis, we found that total AIB shipments during the quarter rose 21.1%,
which is greater than desktop PCs, which fell 10.9%.

Gaming the game changer. However, in spite of the overall PC churn,
somewhat due to tablets and embedded graphics, the PC gaming momentum
continues to build and is the bright spot in the AIB market.

The gaming PC (system) market is as vibrant as the stand alone AIB
market. All OEMs are investing in Gaming space because demand for Gaming
PCs is robust. Intel also validated this on their earnings call., and
the recent announcement of a new Enthusiast CPU. However, it won't show
in the overall market numbers, because like gaming GPUs, the gaming PCs
are dwarfed by the general-purpose machines.

If anyone doubted that the PC was the platform of choice for gaming,
this quarter's results will correct that incorrect misconception. The
gaming market is lifting the entire PC market and has over whelmed the
console market.